Defenses of Newburyport 3 59 62 Stage Fort, Gloucester 4 59 63 Fort Sewall, Marblehead 3 58 61 Fort Pickering, Salem 13 121 134 Mining Casemate, Nahant 3 58 61 Fort Warren, Boston 13 232 245 Fort Rodman, New Bedford 9 116 125 -- --- --- Aggregate for duty 48 703 751 Hardly had the regiment begun to adapt itself to the new conditions, when telegraphic orders from the War Department arrived directing that the batteries be at once recruited to full artillery strength, two hundred enlisted men each—or an aggregate of sixty officers and twenty-four hundred men for the entire command, since an additional second lieutenant would be appointed to each battery when on a war footing. It is needless to say that this order was hailed with delight by both officers and men: to the former it gave promise of more active service, while to the latter it meant unlimited promotion, since over two hundred and fifty additional sergeants and corporals would be required in the expanded batteries. No time was lost in preparing to comply with this order. Major Dyar was detailed as chief recruiting officer, with Captains Williamson and Nutter as assistants, and plans were made for opening recruiting offices in Boston, New Bedford, Brockton, and Salem. Battery commanders immediately attempted to get into communication with the men whom they had left behind, under former conditions, in the hope of finding that not all of them had yet enlisted in the regulars or in other volunteer regiments. Everything was ready for beginning the work of recruiting—when word came by telegraph from Washington that the whole matter was a mistake, and that the recruiting order had been meant to apply alone to the Massachusetts infantry regiments. It was a bitter disappointment. The regiment stood sadly in need of recruits, since its strength as organized barely sufficed for the performance of routine garrison duty, and when the President, on May 25th, issued his call for seventy-five thousand additional volunteers, the officers of the First felt that from the allotment of Massachusetts they should at least secure enough men to bring the regimental enrolment up to twelve hundred. But for a second time they were destined to see their command passed by without consideration. The pressure exerted to bring the Fifth Infantry into the volunteer service, or it may be some other cause yet remaining to be explained, left the faithful First still serving with skeleton ranks.